Does anyone remember the history of the [long] conversation about it that took place somewhere here on the boards about 10 years ago? (when dogs of the dow started failing)

I sure do. I first came to the Fool in about 1998 because I read about the Dogs strategy. I tried to follow it; sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't.

Then the Fool started tweaking the formula trying to get better and better returns (The final result was The Foolish Four). All they were really doing was desperately curve-fitting the data to get results.

In the end (it took a couple of years), they realised that the whole thing was useless.

The seeking alpha article refers to a dogs strategy using each of the nine market sectors instead of the Dow index, picking a selection of the highest divvie-payers in each sector, buying them and holding for a fixed period.

It's just like the Dogs of the Dow aproach, except way more complicated.